Essbase
Encyclopedia
Essbase is a multidimensional database management system
(MDBMS) that provides a multidimensional database platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase, whose name derives from "Extended Spread Sheet dataBASE", began as a product of Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998. Oracle Corporation
acquired Hyperion Solutions Corporation
in 2007, it markets Essbase as "Oracle Essbase". Until late 2005 IBM
also marketed the product — as DB2
OLAP Server.
The database researcher E. F. Codd coined the term "on-line analytical processing" (OLAP
) in a whitepaper
that set out twelve rules for analytic systems (an allusion to his earlier famous set of twelve rules
defining the relational model
). This whitepaper, published by Computerworld
, was somewhat explicit in its reference to Essbase features, and when it was later discovered that Codd had been sponsored by Arbor Software, Computerworld withdrew the paper.
In contrast to "on-line transaction processing" (OLTP), OLAP defines a database technology optimized for processing human queries rather than transactions. The results of this orientation was that MDBMS oriented their performance requirements around a different set of benchmarks
(Analytic Performance Benchmark, APB-1) than that of RDBMS (Transaction Processing Performance Council
(TPC)).
Hyperion renamed many of its products in 2005, giving Essbase an official name of Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services, but the new name was largely ignored by practitioners. The Essbase brand was later returned to the official product name for marketing purposes, but the server software still carried the "Analytic Services" title until it was incorporated into Oracle's Business Intelligence
product suite. http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/essbase.html
In August 2005, Information Age
magazine named Essbase as one of the 10 most influential technology innovations of the previous 10 years,
along with Netscape
, the BlackBerry
, Google
, virtualization, Voice Over IP (VOIP), Linux
, XML
, the Pentium processor and ADSL. Editor Kenny MacIver said: "Hyperion Essbase was the multi-dimensional database technology that put online analytical processing on the business intelligence map. It has spurred the creation of scores of rival OLAP products – and billions of OLAP cubes".
----
issues associated with spreadsheets such as Lotus 1-2-3
and Microsoft Excel
. Indeed, the patent covering Essbase uses spreadsheets as a motivating example to illustrate the need for such a system.
In this context, "multi-dimensional" refers to the representation of financial data in spreadsheet format. A typical spreadsheet may display time intervals along column headings, and account names on row headings. For example:
If a user wants to break down these values by region, for example, this typically involves the duplication of this table on multiple spreadsheets:
An alternative representation of this structure would require a three-dimensional spreadsheet grid, giving rise to the idea that "Time", "Account", and "Region" are dimensions
. As further dimensions are added to the system, it becomes very difficult to maintain spreadsheets that correctly represent the multi-dimensional values. Multidimensional databases such as Essbase provide a data store for values that exist, at least conceptually, in a multi-dimensional "hypercube
".
If the multidimensional database reserved storage space for every possible value, it would need to store 2,400,000,000 (4 × 4 × 3 × 10,000 × 5,000) cells. If the software maps each cell as a 64-bit floating point
value, this equates to a memory requirement of at least 17 gigabytes (exactly 19.2GB). In practice, of course, the number of combinations of "Customer" and "Product" that contain meaningful values will be a tiny subset of the total space. This property of multi-dimensional spaces is referred to as sparsity.
systems generally provide for multiple levels of detail within each dimension by arranging the members of each dimension into one or more hierarchies. A time dimension, for example, may be represented as a hierarchy starting with "Total Time", and breaking down into multiple years, then quarters, then months. An Accounts dimension may start with "Profit", which breaks down into "Sales" and "Expenses", and so on.
In the example above, if "Product" represents individual product SKU
s, analysts may also want to report using aggregations such as "Product Group", "Product Family", "Product Line", etc. Similarly, for "Customer", natural aggregations may arrange customers according to geographic location or industry.
The number of aggregate values implied by a set of input data can become surprisingly large. If the Customer and Product dimensions are each in fact six "generations" deep, then 36 (6 × 6) aggregate values are affected by a single data point. It follows that if all these aggregate values are to be stored, the amount of space required is proportional to the product
of the depth of all aggregating dimensions. For large databases, this can cause the effective storage requirements to be many hundred times the size of the data being aggregated.
Put briefly, Essbase requires the developer to tag dimensions as "dense" or "sparse". The system then arranges data to represent the hypercube into "blocks", where each block comprises a multi-dimensional array made up of "dense" dimensions, and space is allocated for every potential cell in that block. Sparsity is exploited because the system only creates blocks when required. In the example above, say the developer has tagged "Accounts" and "Time" as "dense", and "Region", "Customer", and "Product" as "sparse". If there are, say, 12,000 combinations of Region, Customer and Product that contain data, then only 12,000 blocks will be created, each block large enough to store every possible combination of Accounts and Time. The number of cells stored is therefore 192000 (4 × 4 × 12000), requiring under 2 gigabytes of memory (exact 1,536MB), plus the size of the index used to look up the appropriate blocks.
Because the database hides this implementation from front-end tools (i.e., a report that attempts to retrieve data from non-existent cells merely sees "null" values), the full hypercube can be navigated naturally, and it is possible to load values into any cell interactively.
The first method (dimension aggregation) takes place implicitly through addition, or by selectively tagging branches of the hierarchy to be subtracted, multiplied, divided or ignored. Also, the result of this aggregation can be stored in the database, or calculated dynamically on demand—members must be tagged as "Stored" or "Dynamic Calc." to specify which method is to be used.
The second method (stored calculations) uses a formula
against each calculated dimension member — when Essbase calculates that member, the result is stored against that member just like a data value.
The third method (dynamic calculation) is specified in exactly the same format as stored calculations, but calculates a result when a user accesses a value addressed by that member; the system does not store such calculated values.
The fourth method (calculation scripts) uses a procedural
programming language
specific to the Essbase calculation engine. This type of calculation may act upon any data value in the hypercube, and can therefore perform calculations that cannot be expressed as a simple formula.
A calculation script must also be executed to trigger the calculation of aggregated values or stored calculations as described above—a built-in calculation script (called the "default calculation") can be used to execute this type of calculation.
Following a data load, Essbase ASO does not store any aggregate values, but instead calculates them on demand. For large databases, where the time required to generate these values may become inconvenient, the database can materialize one or more aggregate "views", made up of one aggregate level from each dimension (for example, the database may calculate all combinations of the fifth generation of Product with the third generation of Customer), and these views are then used to generate other aggregate values where possible. This process can be partially automated, where the administrator specifies the amount of disk space that may be used, and the database generates views according to actual usage.
This approach has a major drawback in that the cube cannot be treated for calculation purposes as a single large hypercube, because aggregate values cannot be directly controlled, so write-back from front-end tools is limited, and complex calculations that cannot be expressed as MDX
expressions are not possible.
The first method (dimension aggregation) basically duplicates the algorithm used by Essbase BSO.
The second method (dynamic calculations) evaluates MDX
expressions against dimension members.
an add-in for Microsoft Excel
(previously also Lotus 1-2-3
). The add-in adds a menu to the spreadsheet application that can be used to connect to Essbase databases, retrieve data, and navigate the cube's dimensions ("Zoom in", "Pivot", etc.).
With the release of System 9, Hyperion provided a new user interface add-in for Essbase called "SmartView for Microsoft Office
". SmartView provides access to Essbase and other System 9 content for Microsoft Powerpoint
, Microsoft Word
, Microsoft Outlook
as well as supplanting the previous add-in for Microsoft Excel
.
In 2005, Hyperion began to offer a visualization tool called Tableau
under the name "Hyperion Visual Explorer" http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2007/tableau-software-lands-global-oem-deal-hyperion (2005). Tableau originated at Stanford University
as a government-sponsored research project to investigate new ways for users to interact with relational
and OLAP
databases.
Other user-facing applications with support for Essbase databases include:
The previous offerings from Hyperion acquired new names as given below:
APIs are available for C
, Visual Basic
and Java
, and embedded scripting support is available for Perl
. The standardised XML for Analysis
protocol can query Essbase data sources using the MDX
language.
In 2007, Oracle Corporation began bundling Hyperion BI tools into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus.
, (MOLAP, HOLAP, ROLAP), IBM Cognos
(ROLAP), IBM/Cognos/Applix TM1
(MOLAP), Oracle OLAP
(ROLAP/MOLAP), and MicroStrategy
(ROLAP).
Also note that of the above competitors, including Essbase, all use heterogenous relational (Microsoft SQL Server
, Oracle, IBM DB/2, TeraData, Access, etc.) or non-relational data sourcing (Excel, text Files, CSV Files, etc.) to feed the cubes (facts and dimensional data), except for Oracle OLAP which may only use Oracle relational sourcing.
Database management system
A database management system is a software package with computer programs that control the creation, maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various applications by database administrators and other specialists. A database is an integrated...
(MDBMS) that provides a multidimensional database platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase, whose name derives from "Extended Spread Sheet dataBASE", began as a product of Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998. Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
acquired Hyperion Solutions Corporation
Hyperion Solutions
Hyperion Solutions Corporation was a business performance management software company, located in Santa Clara, California, USA, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007...
in 2007, it markets Essbase as "Oracle Essbase". Until late 2005 IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
also marketed the product — as DB2
IBM DB2
The IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition is a relational model database server developed by IBM. It primarily runs on Unix , Linux, IBM i , z/OS and Windows servers. DB2 also powers the different IBM InfoSphere Warehouse editions...
OLAP Server.
The database researcher E. F. Codd coined the term "on-line analytical processing" (OLAP
OLAP
In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
) in a whitepaper
that set out twelve rules for analytic systems (an allusion to his earlier famous set of twelve rules
Codd's 12 rules
Codd's twelve rules are a set of thirteen rules proposed by Edgar F. Codd, a pioneer of the relational model for databases, designed to define what is required from a database management system in order for it to be considered relational, i.e., a relational database management system...
defining the relational model
Relational model
The relational model for database management is a database model based on first-order predicate logic, first formulated and proposed in 1969 by Edgar F...
). This whitepaper, published by Computerworld
Computerworld
Computerworld is an IT magazine that provides information for senior IT leaders. It is published in many countries around the world under the same or similar names. Its publisher is International Data Group. Computerworld serves the needs of IT management via print and online...
, was somewhat explicit in its reference to Essbase features, and when it was later discovered that Codd had been sponsored by Arbor Software, Computerworld withdrew the paper.
In contrast to "on-line transaction processing" (OLTP), OLAP defines a database technology optimized for processing human queries rather than transactions. The results of this orientation was that MDBMS oriented their performance requirements around a different set of benchmarks
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...
(Analytic Performance Benchmark, APB-1) than that of RDBMS (Transaction Processing Performance Council
Transaction Processing Performance Council
Transaction Processing Performance Council is a non-profit organization founded in 1988 to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry...
(TPC)).
Hyperion renamed many of its products in 2005, giving Essbase an official name of Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services, but the new name was largely ignored by practitioners. The Essbase brand was later returned to the official product name for marketing purposes, but the server software still carried the "Analytic Services" title until it was incorporated into Oracle's Business Intelligence
Business intelligence
Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
product suite. http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/essbase.html
In August 2005, Information Age
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
magazine named Essbase as one of the 10 most influential technology innovations of the previous 10 years,
along with Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
, the BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, virtualization, Voice Over IP (VOIP), Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, the Pentium processor and ADSL. Editor Kenny MacIver said: "Hyperion Essbase was the multi-dimensional database technology that put online analytical processing on the business intelligence map. It has spurred the creation of scores of rival OLAP products – and billions of OLAP cubes".
----
History and motivation
Although Essbase has been categorised as a general-purpose multidimensional database, it was originally developed to address the scalabilityScalability
In electronics scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth...
issues associated with spreadsheets such as Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
and Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
. Indeed, the patent covering Essbase uses spreadsheets as a motivating example to illustrate the need for such a system.
In this context, "multi-dimensional" refers to the representation of financial data in spreadsheet format. A typical spreadsheet may display time intervals along column headings, and account names on row headings. For example:
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantity | 1000 | 2000 | 3000 | 6000 |
| Sales | $100 | $200 | $300 | $600 |
| Expenses | $80 | $160 | $240 | $480 |
| Profit | $20 | $40 | $60 | $120 |
If a user wants to break down these values by region, for example, this typically involves the duplication of this table on multiple spreadsheets:
EWLINE
|
EWLINE
|
EWLINE
|
An alternative representation of this structure would require a three-dimensional spreadsheet grid, giving rise to the idea that "Time", "Account", and "Region" are dimensions
Dimensions
Dimensions is a French project that makes educational movies about mathematics, focusing on spatial geometry. It uses POV-Ray to render some of the animations, and the films are release under a Creative Commons licence....
. As further dimensions are added to the system, it becomes very difficult to maintain spreadsheets that correctly represent the multi-dimensional values. Multidimensional databases such as Essbase provide a data store for values that exist, at least conceptually, in a multi-dimensional "hypercube
OLAP cube
An OLAP cube is a data structure that allows fast analysis of data. It can also be defined as the capability of manipulating and analyzing data from multiple perspectives...
".
Sparsity
As the number and size of dimensions increases, developers of multidimensional databases increasingly face technical problems in the physical representation of data. Say the above example was extended to add a "Customer" and "Product" dimension:| Dimension | Number of dimension values |
|---|---|
| Accounts | 4 |
| Time | 4 |
| Region | 3 |
| Customer | 10,000 |
| Product | 5,000 |
If the multidimensional database reserved storage space for every possible value, it would need to store 2,400,000,000 (4 × 4 × 3 × 10,000 × 5,000) cells. If the software maps each cell as a 64-bit floating point
Double precision
In computing, double precision is a computer number format that occupies two adjacent storage locations in computer memory. A double-precision number, sometimes simply called a double, may be defined to be an integer, fixed point, or floating point .Modern computers with 32-bit storage locations...
value, this equates to a memory requirement of at least 17 gigabytes (exactly 19.2GB). In practice, of course, the number of combinations of "Customer" and "Product" that contain meaningful values will be a tiny subset of the total space. This property of multi-dimensional spaces is referred to as sparsity.
Aggregation
OLAPOLAP
In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
systems generally provide for multiple levels of detail within each dimension by arranging the members of each dimension into one or more hierarchies. A time dimension, for example, may be represented as a hierarchy starting with "Total Time", and breaking down into multiple years, then quarters, then months. An Accounts dimension may start with "Profit", which breaks down into "Sales" and "Expenses", and so on.
In the example above, if "Product" represents individual product SKU
Stock Keeping Unit
→A stock-keeping unit or SKU is a number or code used to identify each unique product or item for sale in a store or other business.It is a unique identifier for each distinct product and service that can be purchased...
s, analysts may also want to report using aggregations such as "Product Group", "Product Family", "Product Line", etc. Similarly, for "Customer", natural aggregations may arrange customers according to geographic location or industry.
The number of aggregate values implied by a set of input data can become surprisingly large. If the Customer and Product dimensions are each in fact six "generations" deep, then 36 (6 × 6) aggregate values are affected by a single data point. It follows that if all these aggregate values are to be stored, the amount of space required is proportional to the product
Product (mathematics)
In mathematics, a product is the result of multiplying, or an expression that identifies factors to be multiplied. The order in which real or complex numbers are multiplied has no bearing on the product; this is known as the commutative law of multiplication...
of the depth of all aggregating dimensions. For large databases, this can cause the effective storage requirements to be many hundred times the size of the data being aggregated.
Block storage (Essbase Analytics)
Since version 7, Essbase has supported two "storage options" which take advantage of sparsity to minimize the amount of physical memory and disk space required to represent large multidimensional spaces. The Essbase patent describes the original method, which aimed to reduce the amount of physical memory required without increasing the time required to look up closely related values. With the introduction of alternative storage options, marketing materials called this the Block Storage Option (Essbase BSO), later referred to as Essbase Analytics.Put briefly, Essbase requires the developer to tag dimensions as "dense" or "sparse". The system then arranges data to represent the hypercube into "blocks", where each block comprises a multi-dimensional array made up of "dense" dimensions, and space is allocated for every potential cell in that block. Sparsity is exploited because the system only creates blocks when required. In the example above, say the developer has tagged "Accounts" and "Time" as "dense", and "Region", "Customer", and "Product" as "sparse". If there are, say, 12,000 combinations of Region, Customer and Product that contain data, then only 12,000 blocks will be created, each block large enough to store every possible combination of Accounts and Time. The number of cells stored is therefore 192000 (4 × 4 × 12000), requiring under 2 gigabytes of memory (exact 1,536MB), plus the size of the index used to look up the appropriate blocks.
Because the database hides this implementation from front-end tools (i.e., a report that attempts to retrieve data from non-existent cells merely sees "null" values), the full hypercube can be navigated naturally, and it is possible to load values into any cell interactively.
Calculation engine
Users can specify calculations in Essbase BSO as:- the aggregation of values through dimensional hierarchies;
- stored calculations on dimension members;
- "dynamically calculated" dimension members; or
- procedural "calculation scripts" that act on values stored in the database.
The first method (dimension aggregation) takes place implicitly through addition, or by selectively tagging branches of the hierarchy to be subtracted, multiplied, divided or ignored. Also, the result of this aggregation can be stored in the database, or calculated dynamically on demand—members must be tagged as "Stored" or "Dynamic Calc." to specify which method is to be used.
The second method (stored calculations) uses a formula
Formula
In mathematics, a formula is an entity constructed using the symbols and formation rules of a given logical language....
against each calculated dimension member — when Essbase calculates that member, the result is stored against that member just like a data value.
The third method (dynamic calculation) is specified in exactly the same format as stored calculations, but calculates a result when a user accesses a value addressed by that member; the system does not store such calculated values.
The fourth method (calculation scripts) uses a procedural
Procedural
Procedural may refer to:*Procedural programming, a computer programming concept*Procedural generation, a term used in connection with computer graphics applications to indicate that data is created algorithmically rather than directly specified by an artist...
programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
specific to the Essbase calculation engine. This type of calculation may act upon any data value in the hypercube, and can therefore perform calculations that cannot be expressed as a simple formula.
A calculation script must also be executed to trigger the calculation of aggregated values or stored calculations as described above—a built-in calculation script (called the "default calculation") can be used to execute this type of calculation.
Aggregate storage (Enterprise Analytics)
Although block storage effectively minimizes storage requirements without impacting retrieval time, it has limitations in its treatment of aggregate data in large applications, motivating the introduction of a second storage engine, named Aggregate Storage Option (Essbase ASO) or more recently, Enterprise Analytics. This storage option makes the database behave much more similarly to OLAP databases like SQL Server Analysis Services.Following a data load, Essbase ASO does not store any aggregate values, but instead calculates them on demand. For large databases, where the time required to generate these values may become inconvenient, the database can materialize one or more aggregate "views", made up of one aggregate level from each dimension (for example, the database may calculate all combinations of the fifth generation of Product with the third generation of Customer), and these views are then used to generate other aggregate values where possible. This process can be partially automated, where the administrator specifies the amount of disk space that may be used, and the database generates views according to actual usage.
This approach has a major drawback in that the cube cannot be treated for calculation purposes as a single large hypercube, because aggregate values cannot be directly controlled, so write-back from front-end tools is limited, and complex calculations that cannot be expressed as MDX
Multidimensional Expressions
Multidimensional Expressions is a query language for OLAP databases, much like SQL is a query language for relational databases. It is also a calculation language, with syntax similar to spreadsheet formulas.-Background:...
expressions are not possible.
Calculation engine
Essbase ASO can specify calculations as:- the aggregation of values through dimensional hierarchies; or
- dynamically calculated dimension members.
The first method (dimension aggregation) basically duplicates the algorithm used by Essbase BSO.
The second method (dynamic calculations) evaluates MDX
Multidimensional Expressions
Multidimensional Expressions is a query language for OLAP databases, much like SQL is a query language for relational databases. It is also a calculation language, with syntax similar to spreadsheet formulas.-Background:...
expressions against dimension members.
User interface
Many users work with Essbase data using as their interfaceUser interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
an add-in for Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
(previously also Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
). The add-in adds a menu to the spreadsheet application that can be used to connect to Essbase databases, retrieve data, and navigate the cube's dimensions ("Zoom in", "Pivot", etc.).
With the release of System 9, Hyperion provided a new user interface add-in for Essbase called "SmartView for Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
". SmartView provides access to Essbase and other System 9 content for Microsoft Powerpoint
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
, Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
, Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
as well as supplanting the previous add-in for Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
.
In 2005, Hyperion began to offer a visualization tool called Tableau
Tableau Software
Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence, and is reportedly anticipating revenue of $30 million to $40 million in 2010.- History :The company traces...
under the name "Hyperion Visual Explorer" http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2007/tableau-software-lands-global-oem-deal-hyperion (2005). Tableau originated at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
as a government-sponsored research project to investigate new ways for users to interact with relational
Relational database
A relational database is a database that conforms to relational model theory. The software used in a relational database is called a relational database management system . Colloquial use of the term "relational database" may refer to the RDBMS software, or the relational database itself...
and OLAP
OLAP
In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
databases.
Other user-facing applications with support for Essbase databases include:
- Hyperion Analyzer (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Web Analysis)
- Hyperion Reports (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Financial Reporting)
- Hyperion Enterprise Reporting
- Hyperion Intelligence (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Interactive Reporting)
- Hyperion SQR (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Production Reporting)
- Alphablox
- Arcplan dynaSight (aka Arcplan Enterprise)
- Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise EditionOracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise EditionOracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus, also known as OBI EE Plus, is Oracle's set of business intelligence tools consisting of former Siebel business intelligence and Hyperion business intelligence offerings....
(aka OBIEE, Siebel Analytics) - Applied OLAP Dodeca
- CXO-Cockpit Reporting Suite
The previous offerings from Hyperion acquired new names as given below:
| Hyperion's previous offerings | Hyperion System 9 BI+ offerings |
|---|---|
| Hyperion Essbase ASO | Enterprise Analytics |
| Hyperion Essbase BSO | Essbase Analytics |
| Hyperion Analyzer | Web Analysis |
| Hyperion Reports | Financial Reporting |
| Hyperion Intelligence | Interactive Reporting |
| Hyperion SQR | Production Reporting |
| Hyperion Metrics Builder | Enterprise Metrics |
APIs are available for C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, Visual Basic
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
and Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, and embedded scripting support is available for Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
. The standardised XML for Analysis
XML for Analysis
XML for Analysis is an industry standard for data access in analytical systems, such as OLAP and data mining. XMLA is based on other industry standards such as XML, SOAP and HTTP...
protocol can query Essbase data sources using the MDX
Multidimensional Expressions
Multidimensional Expressions is a query language for OLAP databases, much like SQL is a query language for relational databases. It is also a calculation language, with syntax similar to spreadsheet formulas.-Background:...
language.
In 2007, Oracle Corporation began bundling Hyperion BI tools into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus.
Administrative interface
A number of standard interfaces can administer of Essbase applications:- ESSCMD, the original command line interface for administration commands;
- MaxL, a "multi-dimensional database access language" which provides both a superset of ESSCMD commands, but with a syntax more akin to SQLSQLSQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
, as well as support for MDXMultidimensional ExpressionsMultidimensional Expressions is a query language for OLAP databases, much like SQL is a query language for relational databases. It is also a calculation language, with syntax similar to spreadsheet formulas.-Background:...
queries; - Essbase Application Manager, the original Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
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administration client, compatible with versions of Essbase before 7.0; - Essbase Administration Services, later renamed Analytic Administration Services, and then back to 'Essbase Administration Services' in v. 9.3.1, the currently supported GUIGuiGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
administration client; and - Essbase Integration Server for maintaining the structure and content of Essbase databases based on data models derived from relational or file-based data sources.
Competitors
There are several significant competitors among the OLAP, analytics products to that of Essbase (HOLAP/MOLAP) on the market, among them Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Analysis ServicesMicrosoft Analysis Services
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services is part of Microsoft SQL Server, a database management system. Microsoft has included a number of services in SQL Server related to business intelligence and data warehousing. These services include Integration Services and Analysis Services...
, (MOLAP, HOLAP, ROLAP), IBM Cognos
Cognos
Cognos was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence and performance management software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries.Originally Quasar Systems Limited, it adopted the Cognos...
(ROLAP), IBM/Cognos/Applix TM1
TM1
IBM Cognos TM1 is enterprise planning software used to implement collaborative planning, budgeting and forecasting solutions, as well as analytical and reporting applications. Data in IBM Cognos TM1 is stored and represented as multidimensional OLAP cubes, with data being stored at the "leaf" level...
(MOLAP), Oracle OLAP
Oracle OLAP
The Oracle Database OLAP Option implements On-line Analytical Processing within an Oracle database environment. Oracle Corporation markets the Oracle Database OLAP Option as an extra-cost option to supplement the "Enterprise Edition" of its database...
(ROLAP/MOLAP), and MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy, Inc. , is a business intelligence software vendor. MicroStrategy's software enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make more strategic business decisions...
(ROLAP).
Also note that of the above competitors, including Essbase, all use heterogenous relational (Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
, Oracle, IBM DB/2, TeraData, Access, etc.) or non-relational data sourcing (Excel, text Files, CSV Files, etc.) to feed the cubes (facts and dimensional data), except for Oracle OLAP which may only use Oracle relational sourcing.
Export and/or product migration of Essbase
two options can export Essbase cubes into other formats:- CubePortCubePortCubePort is a commercial software application that converts from Oracle Essbase to the analogous Microsoft product Microsoft Analysis Services, which is built-in to Microsoft SQL Server. This application achieves this through various analogy mapping techniques, and is a standard client-server...
, a commercial conversion application, converts Essbase cubes to the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services product. This product performs an object-to-object translation that make up an Essbase cube, including: outline, member formulas, calc scripts, data loading (load rules), report scripts to MDX queries, substitution variables, and security model. It can extract from any platform version of Essbase, including Oracle/Hyperion Essbase on Windows, Unix, AIX, HP UX, Solaris, IBM DB/2 OLAP, or AS/400 Showcase Essbase. - OlapUnderground Outline Extractor performs a pure, rudimentary, export of the outline, though it does not directly create any new objects. The output is a simple text file that can be pulled indirectly into other OLAP products, among other uses, such as synchronizing outlines. The Outline Extractor is now maintained, supported and distributed free of charge by Applied OLAP, Inc.
See also
- OLAPOLAPIn computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
- Oracle OLAPOracle OLAPThe Oracle Database OLAP Option implements On-line Analytical Processing within an Oracle database environment. Oracle Corporation markets the Oracle Database OLAP Option as an extra-cost option to supplement the "Enterprise Edition" of its database...
- Business IntelligenceBusiness intelligenceBusiness intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
- Data Warehousing
- Hyperion PlanningHyperion PlanningHyperion Planning is a budgeting and forecasting application from Oracle formerly owned by Hyperion Solutions Corporation. Hyperion Planning uses Essbase as a database and calculation engine, a relational repository for business logic, and includes a web-based user interface.Hyperion Solutions...
- Comparison of OLAP ServersComparison of OLAP ServersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of Online analytical processing servers. Please see the individual products articles for further information.-General information:-Data storage modes:-APIs and query languages:...